INTERVIEW: 2015 SMOTY WINNER NATHAN BOOTH

FOUNDED in 1988, the Street Machine Of The Year award is the longest-running major award in our sport, and with a $20,000 winner-takes-all cheque from Valvoline, it is also the richest. The award is a pure expression of people power, with the winner voted by the readers of Street Machine via smoty.com.au or by SMS. The list of previous winners includes the likes of Ron Barclay, Howard Astill, Peter Fitzpatrick, Gary Myers and Adam LeBrese.

While elite-level show cars make up the majority of the winners list, SMOTY has also been won by pro street and pro touring-style cars, as well as a handful of genuine street cars. This year’s result was a resounding win for the latter, with Nathan Booth’s HR Holden ute garnering the most votes. Powered by a Nissan RB25DET motor, the HR is the first SMOTY winner to be powered by a six-pot, and Nathan is the youngest person to ever win the award. The vast majority of the build was done in the family garage, so we sat Nathan and his dad Steve down to tell us how they did it.

About Us

Street Machine is Australia's number one modified car magazine, bringing V8-powered good times since 1981.

Our lifeblood is tough streeters, but our mission goes far beyond that, with event coverage from all over Australia and beyond, high-quality technical articles, fantastic history yarns and insane motorsports of almost every kind.

With the street machine, hot rod and custom scenes continuing to grow at a crazy rate, we are working harder than ever to shine a light on those creating mechanical masterpieces in their own sheds.